Beginnings
by frazzledsoul
Summary: Lorelai and Rory visit the diner after a short absence, and Lorelai begins to discover a brand new side of Luke. (Pre-series, AU)
1. Chapter 1

_I originally wrote this up as a drabble celebrating **#NationalMapleSyrupDay,** but I liked this concept so much I'm also putting it out there on its own. It may stay a one-shot or it may not: if anyone wants me to continue with it, please let me know._

 _March 1996_

Lorelai Gilmore's journey to becoming an active participant in Stars Hollow town life was a bumpy one.

She stepped off of the bus in Stars Hollow a few months after her eighteenth birthday, freshly divorced and clutching her almost two-year-old daughter by the hand, determined to talk herself into whatever opportunity presented itself to her. She wasn't able to work on her charms on Taylor Doose at the grocery store, or Fran Weston at the bakery, but William Danes at the hardware store gave her directions to the inn at the outskirts of town and an offer to work the counter at his store if things didn't work out. Fortunately, the owner of the inn observed a tenacity and resourcefulness hidden behind the image of the disheveled teenager in front of her, and gave Lorelai a job and a place to stay.

Lorelai hadn't intended to stay in the potting shed as long as she did. Her parents knew where she was staying, and often pleaded with her to return to the original plan they had lain out once Lorelai's ill-fated marriage had reached its inevitable conclusion: they would raise Rory while Lorelai went to college, and once Lorelai had graduated and was earning enough money to support herself, Rory could then resume living with her mother. Lorelai declined every time: she was determined to make her own way in the world with her daughter by her side, and if that meant patching together Rory's clothes from donated scraps and subsisting on leftovers from the kitchen while living in a place that was designed to stock garden tools, she would do it. She had tried to do what her parents thought best, and it had blown up in her face in the exact manner she had suspected it would. She was going to do the rest of it on her own, and someday they would move from this temporary home to a permanent one.

Lorelai worked her way up to the head of housekeeping and was promoted to working the front desk right as Rory entered kindergarten. Mia protested the two of them leaving their shoddy but cozy little nest, but Lorelai knew it was the right time. She and Rory had outgrown the shed, and it was time for them to move forth in the world. They moved to a one-bedroom apartment where Lorelai set up a room for Rory and pulled out her bed every night from the sofa in the living room: a year later, they upgraded to a two-bedroom apartment where they could both have their own room. Lorelai became assistant manager of the inn two years after that, and they moved to a rental house not far from the inn. The money Lorelai saved on gas money went a long way towards sustaining the life she had built for them: even as hard as she had worked to make a good life for the two of them, far too often the bills seemed to overwhelm them, and that elusive dream of a home of their own still seemed like a fantasy most of the time.

Throughout it all, Lorelai's involvement in the life of the town was often sporadic at best. She knew that her choice to move away from the inn probably cost her a lot in terms of money and energy: even if the end result was a more normal life for Rory, sometimes she lacked the reserves to participate in that life alongside her. Rory was enrolled in dance classes and Girl Scouts and often took center stage in town festivals and pageants, but Lorelai only participated occasionally. There were seasons when she would be the center of it all, but sometimes those faded away under the din of bills and responsibilities and her diminishing ability to have energy for much of anything else.

Lorelai became manager of the inn the year Rory finished fourth grade, and at last things seemed to be looking up for them financially. She had earned a moment to finally _breathe_ and appreciate what she had worked for, and she used that moment to plunge forth into becoming the Stars Hollow denizen she wanted to be. She and Rory went to town meetings every week. Having long supplemented her income by doing dressmaking on the side, she started making the outfits for the festivals and elementary school pageants. They started eating out more, and they ended up eating half of their meals at the diner that had recently replaced the hardware store. The gruff diner owner repeatedly resisted her attempts to flirt and needle him, and Lorelai took it as a new daily challenge while Rory rolled her eyes next to her.

Then a slightly worn-down two-story house came up for sale near the center of town, and Lorelai realized that her dreams of homeownership were no longer a fantasy. She could do this. After so many years of working towards this goal, she could have it: a real home for herself and for Rory, one that she owned and that she could call theirs at last. Lorelai moved herself and Rory in and fell into her old patterns while she focused on fixing the house up and managing her mortgage payments. Town life became something the loomed on the periphery of her attentions, and she knew it would be a while before she was able to return to it.

Things had changed a lot by the time she was able to make it back.

Lorelai and Rory walked into the diner one night after not having been there in almost a week: they had slowly worked their way back to eating their meals in town, but it wasn't yet a daily occurrence. Lorelai felt a bit dismayed when she didn't see Luke behind the counter, but her mood brightened when she saw him nestled in her usual table near the window. Luke wasn't dining alone: his companion was a pigtailed toddler in a booster seat, covered up in maple syrup to her elbows.

Luke was also covered up to maple syrup to his elbows, of course.

Lorelai strolled up to the table, a hint of mischief in her eyes.

"Take a seat anywhere," Luke told her, focusing on cleaning up the toddler's face.

"I _want_ to sit here," Lorelai whined.

"Anywhere else," Luke said. He let his eyes meet hers. "I hate when you do that," he told her.

"But who else is going to help you out with baby-sitting duty?" Lorelai asked.

" _Mom_ ," Rory implored, clearly embarrassed.

"This isn't baby-sitting duty," Luke said roughly. "She's mine."

"Luke has a _daughter_?" Lorelai said, shocked. She turned to Rory. "Did you know that Luke had a daughter?"

Rory shrugged. "Kind of."

The little girl looked up at Lorelai with generous brown eyes and lifted up her spoon. "Pancakes?" she asked.

Lorelai smiled, remembering Rory when she was two or three, her eyes shining as she plunged into a rare treat of ice cream. She had looked just like this.

"I think I would like some," she told Luke's daughter. "But your daddy usually doesn't serve breakfast after eleven AM."

The toddler turned her head to Luke's. "Pancakes," she repeated.

"This isn't a Denny's," Luke argued.

"What's good for the kid is good for Rory and me," Lorelai replied.

Luke groaned, clearly sensing he was not going to be able to talk Lorelai out of this. "Fine," he agreed. He waved one of his waitresses over and whispered in her ear before she disappeared behind the counter.

"Luke can never resist my powers of persuasion," Lorelai bragged as she and Rory pulled out chairs to the table and sat down.

"That or he's learned it's better not to begin fighting it," Rory said.

"It's the second one," Luke told them as he watched his daughter cut into her remaining pancakes with her plastic spoon. He looked up. "I notice you didn't ask before you invited yourself to this meal," he remarked dryly.

"I want to know more about this little one," Lorelai said, gesturing to the girl, whose face was once again smeared in maple syrup. "What's your name, sweetie?"

"Abril," said the little girl, still struggling to swallow her bite of food.

"It's nice to meet you, April," Lorelai said, marveling at this new aspect of Luke as he reached out to wipe her face again. "How old is she?" she asked.

"She'll be three next month," Luke said.

"You're not married," Lorelai remarked, turning her gaze to his ring finger. At least that hadn't changed the last time she had looked. She tried to remember to back when she and Rory first started visiting the diner, and she hadn't noticed a ring on his finger at that point, either.

Luke turned his gaze up to meet hers, steeling his intense blue stare on her. "Neither are you," he remarked.

Clearly Lorelai hadn't been the only person who was observing the lack of a ring on the other's finger.

She let that thought quickly slip to the back of her mind.

"I tried," she protested. "I was married to Rory's father for all of seven months." She let out a deep sigh as the waitress brought both her and Rory fresh cups of coffee, and brought the steaming mug to her lips for a sigh. "Wasn't really for us."

Luke looked up from where he was cutting up the scrambled eggs that the waitress had just brought to him.

"I want ketchup on my eggs, Daddy," April said.

Luke looked over to April's plate, which contained about three remaining bites of pancake. "One more bite," he told his daughter.

April frowned and slowly fumbled with the spoon in front of her before giving up and picking up the pancake with her hands. Luke sighed and reached out to attempt to clean her hands again before squirting ketchup on the eggs and passing them over along with a fresh spoon.

"What happened?" he asked Lorelai.

Lorelai shrugged. "We were just kids," she explained. "We had to become adults all of a sudden, and we found out that we didn't really belong together as adults. I knew all along it was a bad idea, but I let our parents talk us into it." She sighed and took another sip of coffee. "I'm glad it happened, though. If we hadn't tried that early and failed, we would have kept prolonging it and that wouldn't have been good for any of us." She turned to look at Rory, who was absorbed in a book. "Especially her."

"Does Rory still see her dad?" Luke asked, keeping one eye trained on April as he attempted to eat his own plate of eggs.

"He lives in California," Rory said, not looking up from her book.

"He's remarried and has another daughter," Lorelai told Luke. "She goes there during the summer and holidays." She raised an eyebrow at Luke, who was wiping ketchup off of April's mouth. "What about you?"

"I didn't really try that," Luke said as he put the soiled napkin down and pulled an extra few from the dispenser. "I lived with April's mother for a year. After that, we split her up between us until about six months ago. She's been with me since then."

"Oh," Lorelai said, wondering if she was poking at a recent emotional scab with this line of inquiry. "So you're a full-time dad, then?"

"I guess you could say that," Luke said as he let his gaze meet Lorelai's. "Nothing really _tragic_ happened," he clarified. "April's mother, she's older, she's a professor at UConn –" he shrugged. 'We weren't together long before April came along. We didn't have a lot in common. April's grandmother has Parkinson's, Anna's having to take a lot of time to take care of her – it just wasn't a good environment for April to be in. She was staying with me most of the time anyway. Anna comes and takes April out to do something about twice a month."

"I just think it's odd I haven't seen you with her until now," Lorelai said softly. "I mean, you had this really important part of your life that everyone else knew about but me. I didn't really see you as the dad type, I guess."

"Me, neither," Luke said as he gazed adoringly at April clumsily spooning a bite of egg into her mouth. "I can't really imagine what it was like before at this point, though."

Lorelai looked at the two of them, her heart again sent aflutter at seeing Luke in this whole new light.

She cleared her throat, and Luke turned his gaze back to her.

"Can I just suggest something, one single parent to another?" Lorelai asked.

"Sure," Luke said uncertainly.

"I know for a long time I was by myself, trying to do everything by myself because I didn't want to ask for help," Lorelai said. "This town was there for me when I needed it, but there's always been times when I kind of retreated because I was too tired or overwhelmed or maybe too focused on this one goal to really rely on them. Even recently. But I know you're in this situation too, and if you need some advice, or someone to complain to, or just someone to come over and help, I want you to feel free to call me and ask. I don't want to be the only one kept out of this part of your life. Especially when I think I might understand it more than a lot of other people would."

"I think I'm doing okay most of the time," Luke told her. "But I'll keep it in mind."

Lorelai smiled. "Good."

She took in a deep breath as food was placed in front of her and Rory, grateful for the prospect of new beginnings.


	2. Chapter 2

_Well, it looks like I'm continuing this. Thanks for all of the feedback!_

 _This chapter is going to go into a little of the background about Luke and Anna, with some information about Jess and Liz thrown in for good measure. I think the reason this AU appeals to me is because I feel that when ASP decided to throw Luke's character down the crapper in season six, the very first thing she tried to get us to believe was that Luke was destined to be a horrible father and that Anna was right to keep him from April. We don't get a pushback from that in canon until the writing team changes, and even then it takes forever._

 _So I wanted to write a story from the exact opposite perspective, and also give Luke the chance to be a dad from the very beginning that he never got in the show._

 _So now we proceed! I'm kind of excited myself to find out what's going to happen._

Parenthood was thrust onto Luke Danes almost as unexpectedly as it was for Lorelai Gilmore.

It had been a rough couple of years. When Luke and his twin sister Liz graduated high school, they had been weathering very different crises. For him, it was the broken heart that resulted from his inevitable breakup with his high school sweetheart as she departed for the West Coast. For her, it was the pregnancy she was barely concealing underneath her graduation gown. Jimmy and Liz's tumultuous relationship calmed to the point where they managed to get married over the summer and settle into an apartment in Hartford, and both William and Luke felt enough of a sense of peace about the situation to allow him to leave home. Luke departed for the University of Connecticut on a track scholarship, with a warning from his father to keep a close eye on Liz if case she wandered into a very different kind of trouble.

College life wasn't exactly as Luke had imagined it. He had his share of inebriated misadventures, but his focus was always drawn towards Liz, with an eye towards Stars Hollow and his father. Liz's young marriage was just as turbulent as both he and his father had expected, and motherhood hadn't quite cured Liz of the inclination to drink and party that had led her into this condition in the first place. By the end of the year, Jimmy had left for good and both Luke and Liz had moved back home. Luke got a degree in business administration at the local community college with vague plans to go back to school when things settled back down. That time never came for him: Liz departed for New York City with Jess just as William Danes was diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually kill him, setting up a certain dance between the siblings that would be perfected over the next couple of years. Luke would care for his ailing father and try to keep the hardware store afloat while Liz would return home after her job prospects or latest love interest had fallen apart. She'd claim she was straightening herself out, that she wanted to stay close to home and let Jess spend time with his grandfather while he still could, and then she'd get restless and leave again.

Luke couldn't really blame her. The task of watching their father slowly wither away was a herculean task that he only bore out of sheer love and necessity. Liz could only handle so much of that pain before she was forced to go to extreme measures to break it out of her skull. Luke didn't want it to break her or Jess irrevocably: if the worst she inflicted on all of them was running away, it was something that he'd have to bear. He didn't want to witness what might happen if she tried to stay.

Rachel came back for the final year of William's illness, and that helped him more than he thought he would. He didn't love her the same way that he had when they were young: he had lived through too much of the ugly aspects of adulthood to hold onto the feeling, and whatever sense of hope and optimism that he had once believed in when it came to something like _romance_ didn't exist anymore. She knew him and she cared for him and she tried to understand. For the time being, that was enough.

Rachel left right after the funeral in a long-predicted course of action. Stars Hollow was too small for her, and her restlessness was too ingrained. Luke felt like his heart should have been broken the way it was five years beforehand, when she left for the first time, but it wasn't. He was spent after so much effort and toil and sacrifice, and he didn't have anything left for her. He wasn't sure when he would have something left to offer.

Liz didn't stay, either, and Luke was a little grateful for that. He knew that she would be back eventually, and that he'd be shielding both her and Jess from the brunt of her hasty decisions for the rest of their lives. Liz never let things get bad enough to completely shatter the equilibrium between them, and if that meant that she was never motivated to completely become the mother she should have been, perhaps that was just another part of their dance. She was fragile in a way that he wasn't, and he wouldn't force anything on her that he feared might do the trick in destroying her completely. He was the protector, and she and Jess were the ones that he protected. Even if it wasn't a constant for either of them, he would be the reassurance she returned to again and again.

Luke kept the hardware store going for as long as he could, but eventually he was forced to close it. He was somewhat at a loss at that point, but the idea of a diner appealed to him in a way that continuing his dad's old business hadn't. He could build something out of the bones of what that old store had meant to him and somehow make it his own: maybe it would never be the same, but you could only exist for so long with the same ghosts haunting you over and over again. When he thought about what his dad would have wanted, he believed that it would have looked something like what he envisioned.

He was in the midst of finalizing the plans for his new project when he met Anna Nardini in the dusty corner of a Hartford bar. She was exactly the kind of distraction that he needed.

They remembered each other, of course. College was enough of a distant memory for him that none of it felt wrong, and he was still young enough to be flattered by the attentions of an alluring older woman who had known him before all of these adult tragedies had fully taken root in his life. They had nothing in common and no hope of a lasting relationship, and that was perhaps the point. It was heady and intoxicating while it lasted, and both of them very much enjoyed it.

When she stopped calling in the first few weeks after the diner opened, Luke figured that was the end of it. He was focused on getting his business off of the ground, and this unlikely fling was the least of his concerns. Maybe that something else that he known that he wasn't capable of offering Rachel could finally be awoken in him by this point. He knew that Anna by herself wasn't the answer, and maybe the diner wasn't either, but they were parts to a whole that would eventually some together for him someday.

Or maybe that was sentimental bullshit, but he wasn't really that concerned about it at this point.

After a month of no contact, Anna mailed him the sonogram picture with a note saying that it was his decision to make if he wanted to be involved.

He never wavered for a second in what his response was.

Anna took a no-nonsense approach to the situation from the beginning. She arranged a paternity test so that Luke would have no doubts about the situation. Once that was clarified, she explained to him that she wasn't interested in marriage, and at forty-one years old, she didn't think much about her way of life was going to change. She and Luke moved into a house in Manchester, an equal distance from both of their workplaces, and set about the motions of bringing a baby into the world with the utmost efficiency.

From the moment April Katherine Danes entered the world, Luke knew that she was his. She looked up at him with those earnest brown eyes, and Luke felt again what he had felt for his father. The love that he hadn't been able to give to Rachel, that devotion that he felt had been obliterated from him from the ravages of his father's illness, was finally born again in him when he held his daughter for the first time. She was his constant, and he would be the constant for her.

It wasn't the same for Anna. Luke knew that she tried, but there was always something missing in her eyes when she tried to go through the routines of parenthood that Luke had perfected with such ease. He reasoned to himself that maybe it was the difference in their ages, or that Anna had gotten so used to a particular lifestyle that when it came time to fit a baby into it that it was inevitable that she would struggle with it in a way that he couldn't. Who knows how he would have handled it if he suddenly became a father in his forties? Yet Luke knew he was lying to himself even as he made those excuses. Anna wasn't capable of adapting to life with either April or him, and it was only a matter of time before they both were removed from her world.

The end officially came when Liz and Jess came into town on the heels of her latest disastrous break-up. Maybe Luke knew what was coming when he rented an apartment for Liz and Jess in Stars Hollow that he knew they wouldn't end up staying in, but it still came as a bit of a surprise when Anna asked both him and April to leave a week after his sister and nephew had departed once again for New York. Valiant attempts were made at joint custody, but Anna rarely could make it an entire week by herself: her time with April was pared down to the occasional weekend, and finally to a few hours at the playground or the park twice a month. Anna did spend a lot of time caring for her ailing mother, but Luke knew it was mostly another excuse: she just didn't have it in her to be a mother herself. Maybe that was something to mourn and maybe it wasn't, but it was what it was.

As for him and his little girl, they only belonged to each other, and Luke felt that it was all that he needed. He only hoped he could do the same for her.


	3. Chapter 3

_Okay, since I've been lazy about replying to reviews individually, let me just say that I'm thankful for all of the feedback and I look forward to finding out what comes next as much as anyone else._

 _I've been asked why I've essentially made Anna the villain. I do not like that character at all and always found that her control freak nature led her to do some pretty awful things that hurt her child (namely, blocking all access to April once Luke challenged her, even though April loved and missed Luke by that point). Her personality hasn't changed: it is just being reflected in this story in a different way._

 _I also kind of wanted to switch Luke and Lorelai's parenting roles: here, he is completely on his own while she is the one that has to co-parent. Both of them will deal with their exes, and there will be no romanticizing how things could or should have been. They lived with those people and tried to raise children with them, but it failed, and now they have to deal with them rationally._

 _So enough of the infodump, and please enjoy. Feel free to drop me any suggestions as I'm still very early in working this out in my head._

Lorelai started to time her visits to the diner to coincide with Luke (and April's) presence shortly after their impromptu shared dinner.

She wasn't aware of it at first. The house was mostly finished, and she wasn't really scrambling financially anymore to cover the costs of furnishing and upkeeping a larger space. She and Rory were finally free to eat out instead of cobbling together a meal at home while she worked on dressmaking projects in her spare time. They had to eat somewhere, didn't they? And she wasn't exactly _stalking_ him: she was just curious. She had asked around about April, but she hadn't been able to get much information: little was known about her mother, and even Patty and Babette said that they had never seen her. Most of Stars Hollow hadn't even known of her existence until Luke had shown up with a chestnut-haired toddler on the heels of his sister's latest departure, and since then he and April had mostly kept to themselves. It had been relatively easy for Lorelai to remain oblivious to the presence of Luke's mystery child while she hunkered down and dealt with the details of yet another major life change.

Lorelai had noticed that if she scurried to the diner immediately at five without running home to change clothes that she and Rory could sit down to dinner with Luke and April in the diner. Rory usually wasn't receptive to that, and it was rare that she could leave work that early, so it didn't happen often. If she strolled in at six o clock, she would often miss Luke completely: if they made it close to seven, she could catch him without April. Lorelai noticed that he always kept a baby monitor clipped to his belt (she wondered how she had missed this before and why she oddly found it enhanced his manly man persona) and that he disappeared upstairs for five minutes intervals about every half hour.

She supposed that he and April lived above the diner. She wondered why she had never thought about it before.

One night, Lorelai ventured to the diner alone at seven after dropping Rory off at Lane's so that they could finish a school project together, and kept an eye out for Luke. She ordered her usual burger and fries and waited for him to wander over to her table so that they could engage in the combination of teasing and single parent commiseration that now comprised the bulk of their everyday banter. She was thinking lately that maybe she and Rory needed a little break from each other, especially since Rory seemed slightly annoyed whenever the subject of Luke or April came up at this point. She loved her daughter with all of her heart, but occasionally it was nice for each of them to enjoy a little company with someone their own age.

Luke didn't show up. Lorelai frowned and finished her burger, wondering if she should have stayed at home tonight and watched some television instead. She didn't see anyone in the diner she wanted to strike up a conversation with, and maybe the set timer on her VCR could use a break these days. She could always make her way over to Sookie's, but Sookie and Jackson were in the middle of some insane obsession with cobbling together vegetarian casseroles in their spare time and it was best not to intervene.

Cesar emerged from the curtain behind the diner, grumbling as he made his way back to the kitchen. Lorelai decided to stay put and ordered some pie.

Ten minutes later, one of Luke's waiters quickly disappeared behind the curtain and Lorelai heard the slight echo of his footsteps ascending a flight of stairs. He returned to the diner a few moments later, had a quick conversation with a flustered Cesar, and then brought the pie around to Lorelai's table.

"Sorry about that," he apologized to Lorelai as he placed a slice of warm strawberry pie in front of her.

"Where's Luke tonight, Jon?" Lorelai asked.

Just at that moment, Lorelai heard a familiar echo from above them: the impassioned cry of a miserable toddler, followed by the steady sound of footsteps pacing across the floor.

Jon shrugged. "Parenting crisis, I guess," he explained. "It's just me and Cesar tonight."

Lorelai nodded. "Been there," she told him as he moved to another table.

Lorelai finished her pie and went to the counter to pay the bill just as an exasperated Cesar emerged from behind the curtain.

"I can't reason with him," he told Jon. "He says he'll be out tomorrow too. He's going to try to call in someone else, but – "

"Maybe I can help," Lorelai interjected.

"You don't work here," Jon said with a chuckle.

"That's not what I meant," Lorelai replied. "Maybe I can go up, talk to him, help him out with whatever the crisis is. I am raising a kid by myself too, you know."

Cesar sighed. "It couldn't hurt," he said. "The stairs are to the left of the curtain, office is on the right. Just don't get too alarmed if he won't let you in."

Lorelai nodded as she tucked her change back in her purse and ventured behind the curtain, pondering to herself just how a single man and his two-year-old could live inside William Danes's tiny office.

She had dealt with worse, but not everyone was up to the task. She had learned that the hard way the few times she had tried to befriend other single moms.

Lorelai gingerly tapped on the office door still displaying the William's Hardware lettering on the glass, and received no answer.

She tried again, this time a little louder.

Luke opened the door, looking more rumpled and exhausted than she could ever remember seeing him. His hat and flannel had been discarded, and he was clutching April to his chest, his gray T-shirt slightly damp with the detritus of parenting.

Lorelai smiled to herself when she noticed April's pajamas – pink, decorated with tiny fish, fishing rods, and miniature fishermen. Prototypical pajamas designed for a single dad raising a daughter. She wondered where Luke had got them.

"I'm not coming down tonight," he told Lorelai firmly. "I've told Cesar that twice."

"I know," Lorelai said as she shuffled her heels. "I just wanted to know if you two were okay. I wanted to see if I could help."

"I've got it," Luke insisted. "We're fine. I've got it handled."

"Luke, do you remember what I told you a couple of weeks ago about not being afraid to ask for assistance when you needed it?" Lorelai said softly.

"I remember," Luke replied. "But I don't need help. I can take care of my daughter by myself."

Lorelai inwardly cringed as she remembered barking those words out to anyone who tried to meddle in her stubbornness over the years. Her parents, Chris's parents, Mia, Babette, Sookie, Luke's father –

Sometimes she had been right. And sometimes she hadn't.

"I understand that," Lorelai said. "But you know, as someone who's been there before, and who looked in vain for someone to talk to about it, over and over and over again, until I thought I was going insane, and there was no one – "

Luke sighed, and Lorelai grinned, sensing an opening.

"– I figure you might as least want to talk to someone about it. Because that someone is on your front door, offering herself up to you on a platter. And you might as well want to stay on her good side. At least for twenty minutes or so, before she has to pick up her own kid and put her to bed. It's probably not the worst idea in the world."

Luke grumbled in acquiescence, and Lorelai's let out a subdued squeal of triumph. "Fine. She's asleep now anyway. Just let me put her to bed. And remember, we've got to be quiet."

"I'll be quiet," Lorelai promised as she stepped into Luke's office/makeshift home for the first time and closed the door behind them.

* * *

The inside of Luke's office wasn't exactly what she was expecting.

Lorelai had been up here years ago when it belonged to William, shortly after she moved into the Independence Inn with Rory. Most of the old family pictures were still up on the walls, but some of the fishing memorabilia had been replaced with newer pictures. There were a couple of phots of what looked like April as a baby, as well as some pictures of Luke with his sister and her son, who Lorelai recognized from their infrequent stays in Stars Hollow. William's desk had been removed and replaced with a sofa and small dresser, and a small kitchen had been laid down as well as a bedroom behind it. Lorelai sat down on the sofa as Luke crossed over to the bedroom to put April to bed.

Lorelai could see him carefully smooth down the covers and lay April in her tiny toddler bed – still propped up by rails so she wouldn't fall out – before tucking the blanket over her and turning out the lamp on what appeared to be a small dresser. Lorelai observed the glow-in-the-dark stars and moon stickers scattered across her roof, and could see the dim outlines of furniture reflected in their florescent light: a toy chest stacked on the opposite wall, the bed, the dresser with a few stuffed animals stacked haphazardly on top of it next to the lamp.

There was practically nothing on his side of the room except for a small built-in bookcase that looked to be overloaded with paperwork. There was no TV, no bed, nothing except for the sofa and the dresser. It was a completely spartan plane of existence, except for the space painstakingly set aside for April.

It was all for April. Everything was for her.

Lorelai remained silent as she watched Luke putter around the kitchen, heating up a cup of coffee for her and tea for himself. She was reminded of her first apartment with Rory, where she had slept in the living room while Rory slept in the bedroom. She hadn't bothered to decorate any part of the apartment other than Rory's room.

"I wouldn't think you would have kept coffee here," Lorelai said as Luke sat beside her on the sofa.

"My sister left some behind the last time she stayed here," Luke said in a rasp. He placed his cup on the coffee table and ran his hand through his hair. He looked absolutely depleted of energy.

"I like what you did with the stickers," Lorelai said, gesturing to the homemade planetarium splattered against the roof of April's nursery. "I wish I'd thought of that."

"Thanks," Luke said. "I'm trying to teach April constellations," he admitted sheepishly.

"How's that going?" Lorelai asked as she picked up her cup and sipped some coffee.

Luke scoffed. "Well, she's two, so you can imagine," he said. "I think she likes it when I tell her the stories."

"You really set up a nice place," Lorelai said sincerely. "I didn't know you lived up here."

"I don't," Luke said quickly. "We've got an apartment over on B Street."

"B Street," Lorelai said. "Rory and I used to live there, about five or six years ago. That means – "

She hit his arm as it suddenly came to her. "He's your landlord!" she exclaimed.

"Shh," Luke said, turning his head in the direction towards April's side of the non-apartment. Both he and Lorelai paused while they listened for any signs of activity.

"It's okay," he said after a few seconds. "She's actually not a light sleeper, believe it or not."

"Your _landlord_ , Luke," Lorelai said in quieter voice, steering him back to the topic. "Taylor Doose is your landlord." She giggled. "This explains so much."

"I got it for my sister a few years ago," Luke explained. "She left almost right away and we moved in. Liz probably would have caused a lot more trouble than we do. No overnight guests, no loud parties and whenever I get pissed off at him the worst I do is let April ride her tricycle on the grass. He finds plenty of other ways to pester me."

"Right before we left, Rory and I decorated the entire driveway in sidewalk chalk," Lorelai revealed. "Nothing permanent, just momentarily garish, you know? I'm pretty sure he pressure-washed the entire thing the minute we were gone."

"I remember," Luke said as he shot her a wry smile. "Jess and Rory did the same thing to the driveway of my dad's house the next day."

"Why didn't you say anything to me?" Lorelai asked. "I could have come over and helped clean it up."

He shrugged. "It washed off when it rained the next day," he said. "Besides, Liz and Jess were living in the house that summer. It wasn't really my call."

"It's so strange that we've lived in the same town for so long, that Rory and Jess have played with each other since they were kids, and we didn't really know each other until you opened this place," Lorelai mused.

"We both had a lot going on during the past ten years," Luke said softly.

"We did," Lorelai agreed. She turned to face him. "Luke, I've got to ask you why you're put together such an elaborate nursery for April if you're not living here."

"We've kind of got a routine," Luke explained. "My friend Maisy keeps her in the morning, and then after the lunch run is through, I pick her up and we have the afternoons to ourselves. We eat dinner in the diner, I put her to bed here, and then after the diner closes, we go home. That room is her bedroom four, five nights a week. I wanted her to be comfortable, to not know the difference. It's probably not the most conventional set up in the world, but – "He shrugged. 'It's what works for us. At least right now, anyway."

"Luke, I lived in the garden shed at the Independence for the first three years Rory and I lived here," Lorelai said. "My childcare until she was four involved her following me around from room to room while I cleaned them." She took a sip of coffee. "Trust me, what you're doing is a lot better for her than what I had to do."

"I guess," Luke replied. He sounded unconvinced.

"What happened tonight?" Lorelai asked. "I'm guessing whatever crisis that called you up here was unexpected."

Luke sighed. "April's mother called, wanted to take her on an overnight visit. She had a stomach virus last week, so I was wary, but Anna really wanted to do it. And it's only been a couple of months since she had April overnight, so I wasn't that concerned. Besides, she missed taking April out last month, so I figure it's good for them to spend some time with each other. April is supposedly _her_ kid, too, right?"

Her voice was starting to grow increasingly bitter, and Lorelai wondered if he was unwittingly revealing more than he intended to when he invited her in tonight.

However, by this point she also knew Luke well enough not to stop him when he was in the middle of a rant. She wasn't about to interrupt him now.

"So, I pack up the clothes and the medicine and give her the extra phone numbers, just in case. I'm thinking I should give in and get a cell phone for these occasions and then I'm thinking that's crazy, what do I need with a cell phone? I should be able to trust her. This is her _mother._ I pack her off, and two hours later I get a call from security at the Hartford art museum because for some reason Anna thought it was a great idea to bring a two-year-old there during the hours she should be taking a nap. And she bought her some juice, which wouldn't have been a big deal except April got frightened by all the crowds and she was tired and that combined with the juice ended up with her throwing a tantrum in the middle of the museum and vomiting all over some rich person's shoes. I'm the one who gets called down there because I'm the _custodial parent_ and Anna can't handle anything by herself. I run in there, April is weeping, Anna is screaming, and all I can think about is how stupid I was to let down my guard again."

Luke let out a deep breath and rested back against the cushions. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "You weren't expecting that."

Lorelai smiled slightly. "I think you needed it," she told him.

"I guess you were right," Luke said. "I did need to talk to somebody about what had happened. About what keeps happening."

"Anna's mother being sick – that's not the real reason why you're taking care of April all by yourself, is it?" Lorelai guessed.

"No," Luke admitted. "Anna's always been like this. It's just gradually gotten worse. Sometimes I think it would be simpler if she just didn't try anymore, but every time she does try and something happens that's not under her complete control she tends to freak out like she did today." He turns to her. "You're divorced. How did you do it? How did you make your ex do what they were supposed to do?"

"I've never really had the same problems that you have, Luke," Lorelai admitted. "Well, that's not entirely true. I did have those problems while I was married." She let out a bitter laugh of her own. "That sounds completely crazy, doesn't it?"

"Not entirely," Luke said, his azure gaze locked on her own.

"By the time it ended, Christopher and I were doing everything possible to avoid each other's company," Lorelai explained. "We'd moved from his parent's house to my mom's pool house, and it just – it just wasn't working out. It was easier for him not to spend time with Rory if it meant he didn't have to spend time with me. I just couldn't do that to her, you know? I wanted to be with my daughter. Avoiding her wasn't an option."

"Right," Luke agreed, her eyes still locked on hers. She knew that he felt the same way about April.

"I did the usual teenage things," Lorelai continued. "I begged. I picked fights with him. I tried to manipulate him. I said I would tattle on him to his mother. I don't recommend any of those things. I was seventeen and crazy and exhausted and I didn't see a way out. The only thing that worked was threatening to check up on him every five minutes when he was with Rory. Christopher asked me not to do that, told me that it was stupid to continue doing that if I wanted him to spend time with Rory. And I let logic invade my brain and I kind of realized that maybe we were better parents if we didn't get in each other's way. That we owed it to Rory to try to be good parents to her without having whatever was going on with _us_ be a part of it. I sat down and talked with him about it and he agreed. That's when we decided to break up."

"You haven't had any problems since then?" Luke asked in an incredulous voice.

"I'm not going to claim that," Lorelai said. "The fact that we were young and kind of winging it probably helped, though. We tried to be married, we failed, and we had to learn the rest of it on our own. We wanted to do it on our own. The plans our parents had for us didn't work, so we had to figure out something else. And Christopher left the state when Rory was six, but it doesn't mean I'm completely rid of him. He stays involved because he wants to be, but I don't deal with him as much as I would otherwise." She took another sip from her cup of coffee. "I'm not sure how much that helps you."

Luke laughed. "It doesn't." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Anna doesn't want to be involved," he stated baldly. "She'll put in some effort every now and then, but only on her terms or when she feels guilty. I've always known it was going to end up to be just April and me. I'm fine with that part. It's just the other stuff I don't know what to do about."

"Is April still sick?" Lorelai asked. "I mean, do you need any help in that department?"

"I don't think so," Luke said. "She was just tired and in a strange place with a lot of strange people yelling at her – "he sighed. "I think she was just frightened. I'm going to stay home with her tomorrow, just in case."

Lorelai drained the last of her cup of coffee and stood up. "I'm due to pick Rory up in about fifteen minutes," she said as Luke stood up beside her. "I'll call and check on you guys tomorrow, okay?"

"You don't have to," Luke protested.

"I want to," Lorelai told him. "That's what friends do for each other, right? And us single parents have to watch out for each other." She stopped to look him in the eye. "I hope that I helped just a tiny bit tonight."

"You did," Luke told her honestly. "You helped a lot."

At that moment, both of them heard April whimper from her bed.

"Duty calls," Luke said as he turned to hug her goodbye before crossing the room to tend to April.

Lorelai shut the door behind her and turned to depart just as she heard the strains of Luke soothing his daughter disappear behind her.


	4. Chapter 4

Lorelai arrived at Lane's front door five minutes after eight and was promptly greeted at the front door by her disapproving mother.

"You said eight," Mrs. Kim told her curtly. "Lane is on schedule. Rory is on schedule. I expect you to be on schedule."

"It's 8:06," Lorelai pointed out, quickly checking her watch.

"Young girls need discipline," Mrs. Kim argued. "They need structure. Where were you?"

"I was helping a . . . friend," Lorelai said defensively.

"What friend?" Mrs. Kim asked. "A male friend? A female friend? What friend?"

"Well – "Lorelai began.

"It's okay, Mama," Lane said as she and Rory stepped up to the door. "We just finished ten minutes ago, and we had to wait for the glue to dry."

Lorelai breathed a sigh of relief at the interruption. She shrugged her shoulders as Rory stepped out of the door and handed her mother the diorama she and Lane had spent all evening working on.

"Don't do it again," Mrs. Kim warned.

"I won't," Lorelai promised, trying to look as contrite as possible. "I really am sorry."

Rory shot her friend a guilty look as Lorelai guided her to their beat-up Toyota, grateful that she had escaped Mrs. Kim's wrath for the time being.

Rory was uncharacteristically quiet during their short drive home, keeping her gaze trained on the project on her lap. Lorelai was reminded of her daughter's moodiness during the past week, and wondered if there was something going on that that had escaped her notice.

"I'm sorry I was late," she offered up as a means of apology. "Lane's mom isn't too upset, is she?"

"I don't think so," Rory said in a neutral voice before lapsing into silence.

Lorelai tried again. "I mean, she's not going to retaliate or not let Lane come over to our house or anything like that, is she?"

Rory shook her head. "She's just really strict with Lane. But I don't think she's mad enough to do something like that."

Lorelai looked over and saw Rory fidgeting with the edges of the figurines she and Lane had spent the past few hours gluing down.

Rory was nervous. Something was definitely wrong.

"Is there something you want to talk to me about, kid?" Lorelai asked her daughter.

"Not really," Rory said in a sullen voice.

"Rory, I'm sorry I was late. I really didn't plan on it, but I don't think the world is going to end over this. Mrs. Kim isn't even mad. I know that something else is bothering you. Just talk to me, please."

Rory lifted her eyes to meet her mother's as they pulled into the driveway.

"You were at Luke's, weren't you?" she asked her mother.

"We go to Luke's practically every night," Lorelai reminded her daughter.

"To eat," Rory said pointedly. "It's not just about eating, anymore, is it?"

Lorelai removed her keys from the ignition and turned to face her daughter. "What exactly are you saying?"

Rory sighed. "Did you stay late to talk to him tonight?"

"Yes," Lorelai admitted. "But I didn't plan on it, Rory. He had a crisis with April, and he needed someone to talk to. Luke's our friend, Rory. You've known him since you were six years old – "

"Seven," Rory corrected her.

"Which is still a long time," Lorelai continued. "You and Jess have been friends since you were barely old enough to trade picture books. Why do you have a problem with Luke all of a sudden?"

"It's just – "Rory began.

Lorelai looked at Rory blankly.

"I don't want another little sister," Rory said in a small voice. "I already have one, and I didn't ask for her, either." She opened the car door and slammed it before scurrying up the front steps.

Lorelai was momentarily stunned.

Rory couldn't be thinking that was going on. She didn't even think of Luke in that way. Did she?

Sure, Luke's embrace of hands-on parenthood had kind of enhanced his rugged persona in her mind, but in an abstract way. The fact that she acknowledged that he was a strapping, sexy single dad didn't mean that she intended to do anything about it.

Except the fact that she had gone out of her way to spend time with him over the past couple of weeks, that is.

Crap.

By the time Lorelai had gotten herself together, Rory had retrieved the key from the turtle on the porch and had let herself into the house. Lorelai ran up the front steps and closed the door behind her, taking care to move Rory's diorama from the living room floor to the kitchen table.

Rory was sitting up on her bed, painstakingly arranging her school notebooks when Lorelai entered her bedroom. Lorelai gingerly sat down on Rory's bed and tried to figure out the best way to explain herself to her daughter. She had figured that the teenage rages and misunderstandings were a few years off, but maybe she had been wrong about that.

Rory was almost twelve. In three years, she'd be the exact age Lorelai had been when she had gotten pregnant.

"Rory, I don't think you understand the situation between Luke and I," Lorelai stated.

"I think I understand just fine," Rory said, her voice sounding slightly more bitter than it should for her eleven and a half years. "He likes you. You like him. You find out he has a kid, so now you _really_ like him."

"That isn't what's going on," Lorelai argued.

"Are you really going to tell me you've never thought about it?" Rory asked. "You've insisted that we go to the diner every night for the past two weeks. I'm not a little kid, Mom. I know how this works."

Lorelai smiled to herself, but hid the expression on her face when she saw Rory's eyes flare in anger.

"If you sit here and tell me it's never occurred to you to date him, that's a lie, Mom," Rory said.

"It's occurred to me," Lorelai told her daughter honestly. "He's a very attractive man. But I'm not interested in him in that way. At least not right now."

"Could have fooled me," Rory retorted.

"Rory, Luke's got a lot going on in his life," Lorelai explained. "I don't know if he would want to date me right now – or anyone else. I know it might not make sense to you right now, Rory, but I know exactly what he's going through. Taking care of a kid by yourself – it can be hard, and confusing, and lonely. I've never regretted a single moment of our life, but there were a lot of times when you were little that I really needed to talk to someone about it, and I didn't have anyone. Luke's in the same position right now."

"It's different, though," Rory argued. "Dad was always around when I was little."

"He was," Lorelai conceded. "But it was still difficult for me. And it's not just Luke. Sometimes I need to talk to someone about those days, too. But I don't want to bring romance into it, Rory. It's not the right time."

"That doesn't mean it won't be the right time later," Rory said. "Mom, you always talked about what we were going to do once we had a house and once you became the manager of the Inn, and now it's happened. I mean, what if you decide to be interested in something else? Someone else? It's been a year since Max – "

Lorelai groaned. Not the subject of Max again.

"Rory, I'm not in any hurry to start dating again," Lorelai told her daughter. "To be honest, I'm still not sure it was a good idea to involve you in my relationship with him in the first place."

"You were going to get married," Rory said indignantly.

Lorelai shook her head. "No, Rory. I said no to his proposal. Max didn't understand our life in Stars Hollow. We didn't have enough in common to make that kind of commitment. I chose to buy the house here instead. And I was too young."

"So, wouldn't it make sense to date someone who lived here, then?" Rory asked.

"If I was interested in such a thing, yes," Lorelai said. "But I'm not. I like our life the way that it is. I'm committed to you and this house and Stars Hollow and I'm not planning on anything else. I'm not saying that I won't be interested in dating anyone else in the future, or that I don't plan on getting married again and having more kids someday. But someday isn't now. I'm not ready for it, and I know that you're not. I don't plan on making any big changes for a while. Can you trust me on that, please?"

Rory sighed. "I guess."

"Rory."

"I trust you, Mom," Rory said with slightly more confidence. "I do."

"Good," Lorelai replied. "Now let's talk about what's really going on."

Rory looked at her mother incredulously. "I just told you."

"Not all of it," Lorelai said. "What's this stuff about your little sister? Are you getting nervous about visiting your dad next week?"

"Kind of," Rory admitted.

"You had such a good time over Christmas," Lorelai pointed out. "Gigi had just come home from the hospital. I thought you had really adjusted to having a new member of your family. You were so excited, Rory. What's changed?"

"It's just – "Rory began. "I don't know how to explain it."

"Try," Lorelai encouraged her.

Rory bit her lip while Lorelai folded her legs up underneath her, waiting for her to continue.

"I don't even remember what it was like having Dad around all of the time," Rory said softly. "But whenever I went to visit him, our time was just ours, you know? Sherry was around, but it wasn't that big of a deal, and now . . . it's never really going to be like that again. They're a family. And I'm the other daughter that comes and visits sometimes."

"Your dad doesn't think of you like that," Lorelai stated. "I know Sherry doesn't, either."

"Her brother sure did at that engagement party," Rory retorted.

Lorelai sighed, remembering all too well Christopher's last significant parenting fuck-up. "Your dad and I have both gone out of our way to make sure that incident never happens again," she told Rory. "And if he doesn't do his part, I will. Has your dad said or done anything to make you feel like you're not welcome?"

"No," Rory admitted.

"You're nervous about the christening," Lorelai guessed.

"I just want to make sure that everyone knows I'm his daughter, too," Rory said.

"I'm going to have a talk with your dad before you leave," Lorelai said. "But Rory, believe me. No one knows better than me how important it is not to have a repeat performance of that situation. If your dad doesn't take care of it, I will. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Rory said. "But it's not just that."

"What is it, then?"

"It's never going to be just _me_ again," Rory said, looking a little guilty.

Lorelai smiled. "Do we need to have the sibling rivalry talk one more time?"

"No," Rory replied.

"I know it isn't going to be like it is with other kids you know," Lorelai said. "There's too much of an age difference. But Gigi's still your sister, Rory. She's going to look up to you and going to want to be just like you. Things are going to be different, but it's not a bad kind of different. You had to adjust when your dad married Sherry, and you're going to have to adjust a little more now that Gigi's in the picture. It's not a bad thing, kid. It's part of growing up."

"I know," Rory said. "I just wish you and Dad maybe could have figured things out when I was a baby. So it wouldn't seem so weird to me. I don't like the way you talk about how it was when you were married. Like it was the worst idea ever. Maybe it wasn't."

"I don't regret marrying your dad," Lorelai told her daughter. "I'm glad that we tried to work things out. I'm also glad that we broke up when we realized that they weren't going to. All three of us would be much more miserable if we had tried to stay together."

"I don't understand it, though," Rory said.

Lorelai reached out and stroked Rory's hair. "I don't expect you to, sweets," she said gently. "I'd like to tell you that when you become a teenager that you're going to meet someone that blows you away, you'll fall in love, and you'll stay with that person forever. But it probably isn't going to happen like that."

"I wish it would," Rory told her mother plaintively, and Lorelai's heart nearly broke in two at the wistful look on her little girl's face. "I wish things were a lot simpler than you say that they are."

"Me too," Lorelai told her daughter, as she was reminded of the way her young heart had broken when she had realized the impossibility of such a concept many years ago. "Me too."


End file.
